June 30, 2008

how not to go camping

this past weekend, i was supposed to go camping in the shenandoah mountains again, like i did a few times last summer. it's gorgeous out there:

but we knew there was a chance of scattered thunderstorms. we've been having a lot of those around here lately - super intense (but small) cells that usually pass over within about half an hour. turns out when you're out in the country, and there's not all buildings and crap in your way? you can SEE where it's raining in the distance:

that line of gray that curves down in the middle of the frame? that's where the rain was. but where we were, it was still really nice:

...although it started getting a little overcast once we got into the park:

and then this happened.

doh. but! then it started clearing again, and THIS happened:

i need to clean up those photos so the colors show up HALF as vibrantly as they were in person. none of us had ever seen such a clear rainbow in our lives - the double rainbow that you can see in the 1st picture was as bright as one you'd normally see, and the bottom one was just absurd. every single color was unbelievably crisp and clear.. and we couldn't even fit the entire thing in one shot, obviously - this was panned back as far as possible and it still took two frames to get both ends.

so! then we got to the campsite, but headed first to the park's general store to pick up some firewood. guess which part of this picture is a filthy lie:

if you guessed the part that says "OPEN," you would be correct. and if you guessed that this:

..was full of firewood, but padlocked shut since they were closed you'd also be correct. which was a problem, because if you recall:

yeah. so we weren't exactly going to be able to find any wood to MAKE a fire.

so we eventually gave up and left the park. it was pretty on the way out, too:

and! on the way out, we saw a BEAR! from our car, but still. it was like 50 feet away, if that. a bear!

at this point, we realized we still had a lot of beer we'd planned to drink while camped out. so then THIS happened:

i'm pretty sure we DIDN'T fail at drinking. this is what a table looks like midway through a game called landmines. if you've never played it, DUDE. EMAIL ME AND I'LL TEACH YOU HOW. it's awesome.

I love your picture story of your non-camping trip. D'oh! At least it looks like you still managed to have fun. We'll try to ward off the rain gods for your trip to Chicago ... but, I will admit, we've had many of the same thunderstorms rolling through town. At least you don't need firewood to survive here!

Nice pics of the Shenandoah! With all of the storms, I don't think I could be convinced to go camping. I don't like the smell of wet boys in my tent! But since we do live way out of the city, we can watch those same storms coming at us. It's pretty wild. (Minus the drinking games.)